Architecture

[Al-khiyal]

The Pyramid is undeniably eye-catching. A 55m-high nest of red-brick flats, it is the most dominant - and provocative - new building on Marcanti Island in Amsterdam's up-and-coming Westpark district. Its twin ziggurats rise from a low tide of dull grey 20th-century apartment housing in an area that was once industrial and productive, and is now home to some of the Dutch city's hippest nightclubs, as well as choice flats. Well off the tourist track, the building is, nevertheless, a very good reason for a trip out to this distant neck of Amsterdam.

The Pyramid certainly makes you smile. It is at once a flag-waving tribute to traditional Dutch housing - that suggestion of stepped gables - and to the spirit of a far more ancient architecture, as well as a way of saying: "Just look at the low and dreary new Dutch housing all around me." Dutch housing of the past decade has been held up as the very model of modern - and modest - domestic design. Architecture magazines worldwide are brimming with the stuff. I'm pretty sure that, like wholemeal bread and low-fat cottage cheese, it's somehow good for you; yet it seems so very glum, a goody two-shoes architecture in danger of being not just a little too pleased with itself, but plain dull.

In the 1980s, the predecessor to this matter-of-factness was a wave of candy-coloured postmodern housing that saw architects plundering architectural history, dressing up otherwise straightforward blocks of offices and flats in coats of too many colours, and more ornamentation than even a Russian princess could bear. The Pyramid might seem a little postmodern at first glance, yet its highly resolved form, unified colour scheme and crisp character suggest it is something else again. Its architects, Soeters Van Eldonk, suggest, in an Alice in Wonderland way, that it might be "unmodern".

This idea of unmodern architecture has been fiercely debated in the Netherlands in recent years. Since the mid-1990s, an increasing number of Dutch architects and other Europeans with commissions in the country have been struggling, with occasional success, to find a new voice for Dutch buildings - an antidote to the safe, flat neo-modernism that steals all those pages in the magazines.

Sjoerd Soeters, who set up in practice with his wife Merle Soeters-Stefels from their Amsterdam flat in 1979, believes the problem with a lot of contemporary architecture is its sameness. Consistency of style, he believes, is a misguided if well-intended limit on the architectural imagination, making new quarters of cities increasingly uninteresting. Soeters believes, instead, in what he calls "flexible response". An opera house shouldn't look like a railway station; a block of flats shouldn't be mistaken for an office block; a house in Amsterdam should be different from one in Groningen.

No one can accuse Soeters and his design partner, Jos van Eldonk, of failing to put theory into practice. In recent years, his 80-strong practice, based in a converted church, has conjured a galaxy of unexpected designs. In Heerenveen, he has created apartment blocks in a park based on French-influenced plans drawn from the era of Louis XVI; two blocks boast cartoonish cut-out metal swans gliding along their parapets. In Noord-Holland, he has built a farmhouse-style villa that belongs both to the distant past and to today. In Den Bosch, he has shaped a block of flats in the guise of a castle (although perhaps this contradicts his own belief that one building type should not be mistaken for another).

The Pyramid is the most striking of this extraordinary assortment, in turns questionable, bizarre and decidedly clever. Interestingly, Soeters suggests that the chance to enliven new Dutch housing has come about through the swing from public to private commissioning. Throughout much of the 20th century, the public sector led the way in housing; while much of this was dryly modern, it was about as much fun as sitting through King Lear in Dutch. And yet the most intriguing and colourful apartment blocks ever built in Amsterdam were by the public sector, for blue-collar workers. Designed by the precociously talented Michel de Klerk in 1917, Het Schip (The Ship) was the third of a trio of extraordinary blocks of council flats.

Why the name? Well, perhaps this block does look a little like a ship; but, more importantly, De Klerk insisted it was built to the same quality as the great Dutch merchant ships of the past, because the block was home to shipbuilders and railway workers.

Soeters has learned a lesson from De Klerk. Like the Ship, the Pyramid rises from a triangular site, and offers gardens, daylight and views to all its inhabitants. The Ship, however, was savaged by Holland's earnest young moderns. Its spire, which served no obvious purpose other than to draw attention to itself, was denounced as irrelevant and decadent, its swooping tiled roofs branded anachronisms, and its rich detailing considered gratuitous. De Klerk's point, though, was this was a home rich in beautifully crafted design details, appropriate for highly skilled working-class residents who, he believed, deserved such special treatment. The Ship incorporates a school and a post office as well as communal gardens and superb, warm, imaginative architecture. It stands as a riposte to those who say it doesn't matter what housing for ordinary people looks like as long as it is warm and dry.

A bit of "unmodernism", though, may well be necessary as a corrective to the march of bland global "nothingness". If the whole of Marcanti Island was covered in ziggurats, it would look a little bonkers; but, rising like the housing equivalent of a lighthouse, or silo, or church, or civic monument, the Pyramid adds some real spirit to this grim-looking waterside stretch of Amsterdam.

And lucky are those who will live there. There are 114 underground parking spaces for the 82 apartments. Each has its own balcony roof garden. From the sixth floor up there are views right across Amsterdam, all the way to the sea, where those mighty merchant ships once set sail.

Pyramid scheme

[Cheba_Mami]

that does look great, i hope it's stable too

[eyad]

Cement blocks offer light to the industry innovators

German cement company, Heidelberg Cement has developed translucent cement blocks. Manufactured by Luccon, a subsidiary of Heidelberg Cement, the new cement block allows light to pass through it.

Speaking to Construction Week at Bau 2007 - the largest building materials exhibition in Munich, Germany - Ingo Gast, an architect at Luccon, said: "This is the latest in cement technology. We haven't even had a formal launch for the product as yet."

The cement blocks are made of regular cement but have fibres running through each piece which allows light to pass through giving it an appearance of translucency.



The new product allows light to pass through it, which makes it suitable for creating open and airy spaces, according to the manufacturer.


With Dubai's construction market being the biggest in the world, the industry is perfect ground for innovative building products.

"The new concrete blocks are a really good idea as it makes the room look more spacious and airy," said Omar Ramiz Fakhira, human resource manager, United Engineering Construction, UAE, who was at the exhibition to source new materials.

"With land plots in Dubai becoming smaller, this new technology will be welcomed I'd imagine. Also with Dubai trying to host world sporting events, such technology will be fantastic for things like stadiums and arenas where natural light is needed, and yet the heat can be kept out."

According to Gast, the blocks can be used to construct anything from villas to multi-storeyed skyscrapers.

"There is absolutely no difference in strength or quality. It can be used in the construction of a tower or of something smaller as well. Its translucency does not compromise its strength. It is as strong and as durable as a normal block of concrete. The fibre that we have used inside to make it translucent is not made of glass as that would be dangerous." But with Dubai Municipality now requiring strict insulation regulations where every building has to be insulated for energy conservation purposes, the new product will be entering a tough market.

"It will be a raging success in the Emirates for its originality but only if it can be insulated up to the required amount," said Attia Mahmoud, general manager, Al Arif Contracting Company, who was at Bau 2007 looking for business partners.

"Dubai is getting stricter and stricter when it comes to things like insulation and other energy saving building techniques and requirements, so this will be the biggest point in this concept doing well in Dubai."

comments??????

[eyad]

A fine resolution image, For a good Illustration..





YES, Concrete blocks rows they are.

[Bent_Bladi]

WOOOOOOOOOOW!!! I haven't been in this thread in a while - bas DANG - what an innovation! . I want to see it - and through it .

this stuff is amazing!! i'm coming back here more frequently

[Bent_Bladi]

What an ugly structure by all strech of imagination (a canadian gone wild, that's what this is!)... I am no connaisseur folks but to be convinced that this is art, I need to smoke what that architect smoked... probably garro afraz maamar

loooooooooooooooool!!! you know - art nowadays is ugly. In my art class last year - we were supposed to identify (from two pictures) which one was "art" and which one was not. It was a picture of a painting of some guy holding a mask and looking sad - and the other was a picture of a urinal ripped off the wall and lying on it's back --- i was confused as hell bas i knew about the "ugly art" rule and i picked the urinal --- lol, full points

bas, as for this building - it's not ugly (not to me, at least). It looks cool - it looks as unstable as if a child built it but it's weird cuz it's so big

[eyad]

Deconstruction is a term in contemporary philosophy, literary criticism, and the social sciences, denoting a process by which the texts and languages of Western philosophy (in particular) appear to shift and complicate in meaning when read in light of the assumptions and absences they reveal within themselves. Jacques Derrida coined the term in the 1960s, and found that he could talk more readily about what deconstruction was not than about what it was, most especially in response to questions posed by others about it.


T H E N , , , , ,


Deconstructivism in architecture, also called deconstruction, is a development of postmodern architecture that began in the late 1980s. It is characterized by ideas of fragmentation, an interest in manipulating ideas of a structure's surface or skin, non-rectilinear shapes which serve to distort and dislocate some of the elements of architecture, such as structure and envelope. The finished visual appearance of buildings that exhibit the many deconstructivist "styles" is characterised by a stimulating unpredictability and a controlled chaos.

Important events in the history of the deconstructivist movement include the 1982 Parc de la Villette architectural design competition (especially the entry from Jacques Derrida and Peter Eisenman[1] and Bernard Tschumi's winning entry), the Museum of Modern Art’s 1988 Deconstructivist Architecture exhibition in New York, organized by Philip Johnson and Mark Wigley, and the 1989 opening of the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, designed by Peter Eisenman. The New York exhibition featured works by Frank Gehry, Daniel Liebeskind, Rem Koolhaas, Peter Eisenman, Zaha Hadid, Coop Himmelb(l)au, and Bernard Tschumi. Since the exhibition, many of the architects who were associated with Deconstructivism have distanced themselves from the term. Nonetheless, the term has stuck and has now, in fact, come to embrace a general trend within contemporary architecture.


Photomontage of the Wolkenbugel by El Lissitzky 1925

Originally, some of the architects known as Deconstructivists were influenced by the ideas of the French philosopher Jacques Derrida. Eisenman developed a personal relationship with Derrida, but even so his approach to architectural design was developed long before he became a Deconstructivist. For him Deconstructivism should be considered an extension of his interest in radical formalism. Some practitioners of deconstructivism were also influenced by the formal experimentation and geometric imbalances of Russian constructivism. There are additional references in deconstructivism to 20th-century movements: the modernism/postmodernism interplay, expressionism, cubism, minimalism and contemporary art. The attempt in deconstructivism throughout is to move architecture away from what its practitioners see as the constricting 'rules' of modernism such as "form follows function," "purity of form," and "truth to materials."



Vitra002a

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Deconstructivism at AllExperts Deconstructivism, U know, Other perspectives.

Some Frank Gehry Work..Amazing !!!!
Thinking “Outside the Box”